CBS News reporter Ben Tracy’s story, which mentioned the IPCC’s latest report, he said that oceans have absorbed much of the heat caused by CO2 and that ocean temperatures have risen only slightly. "Had all that heat gone into the atmosphere, air temperatures could have risen by more than 200 degrees [showed 212 degrees onscreen],” Tracy warned.

Principal Research Scientist Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville called the claim “totally misleading and irresponsible.” Spencer told the MRC’s Business and Media Institute, “The oceans have warmed by an average of less than 0.1 deg. C (only the SURFACE by about 0.5 deg.) since the 1950s, and since that is so much water mass, the absorbed heat equivalent to 0.1 deg. IF RELEASED ALL AT ONCE IN THE ATMOSPHERE [it] would, indeed, be hundreds of degrees. But this is physically impossible. It is a meaningless statistic. The heat actually had to go through the atmosphere before it reached the ocean.”